Climate activists locked up for weekend

Blogpost by Jo Kuper - 12 October, 2007 at 20:30

The world really is a messed up place sometimes. Today, six Greenpeace climate activists in India were denied bail; they are spending the weekend in jail. The ruling happened at pretty much the same time as Al Gore and the IPCC jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to raising global awareness of climate change. That’s something to celebrate for sure. But how can the world wake up to climate change, and at the same time and lock up those trying to do something about it...

The volunteers in Greenpeace India painted “Smoking Kills” onto the chimney of a coal-fired power plant. An impressive feat, that fits pretty perfectly into Al Gore’s call for the world to take action against coal. Back in August he said: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”

As Greenpeace India climate campaigner Vinuta Gopal said: “It is climate change that needs to be arrested, not those who are trying to stop it.”